Could You Compete with Uber?

April 12th, 2017

Could You Compete with Uber?

Imagine if a competitor with deep (almost unlimited) pockets, speed and disruption, like Uber, was to enter your industry as the main competitor. A company that doesn’t care about status quo, is mostly digital, has no legacy IT systems or infrastructure, and comes out of nowhere to compete with your 20+ year old business. How would you tackle it and would you survive?

This actually happened to one of our customers and the competitor was Uber. They decided to go head to head and survive. Here’s the story of Addison Lee.

Addison Lee was started in 1975 and grew over the years to become London’s biggest taxi fleet with 4,800 cars.

Addison Lee and the black-cab drivers now saw a real threat. Uber had enough drivers to provide quick response, a reputation for great customer service and most importantly, booking an Uber was as easy as counting to 10. And they didn’t play by the rules of a licensed minicab company or had the need to be profitable.

What Do You Do When a Competitor Disrupts the Market Like This?

Kodak didn’t see it coming and went bankrupt and similar disruption happened to Nokia, Blackberry, Blockbuster and incumbent airlines. The fact is that only 24% of the Fortune 500 companies from 25 years ago are still around today.

Addison Lee did not wait around for the same faith. The team, led by Liam Griffin as CEO, Peter Boucher CCO and Peter Ingram CTO, decided to double down on their mobile experience with support from Carlyle Group (the owners).

After a failed app initiative in 2013, Addison Lee partnered with DMI to reinvent the mobile experience entirely, supported by the following initiatives:

1. Customer Journey

The end-to-end customer journey was mapped out including interviews with passengers, drivers, customer service staff and corporate customers. This became the basis for getting passengers from A to B in the simplest and fastest way. The user experience drove everything else.

In addition to partnering with DMI, Addison Lee also acquired a JumpIn with a young and passionate team of mobile specialists, including Sam Ryan and Barney Williams.

3. Mobile App

It would have taken Addison Lee years to catch up with Uber in functionality and simplicity from the beginning. Therefore, the decision was made to really focus on the core functionality and use cases and keep it simple. Regulatory restrictions meant that Addison Lee had to include an end point for each journey, but besides this, imagination was the only barrier to create a great customer experience. The MVP was delivered in less than 5 months from start to launch.

4. Connected Analytics

One of Uber’s greatest strengths is that it’s an entirely data-driven organization. Executives, staff and drivers all have access to data that help them improve customer service, utilization, revenue and longer term profitability. Most legacy businesses are driven by financial KPIs reported monthly plus some web analytics, but other than this they are working in the blind. Addison Lee had a parallel initiative to make the business a more data-driven organization.

What Happens Next?

Addison Lee is continuing to invest and acquired Flyte Tyme in the US in January 2017 to become a global player in corporate transportation. Although we’re only at the beginning of the journey, we believe that Addison Lee’s commitment to customer centricity, technology and change is a great example of a legacy business that will excel in the digital age.

WHAT'S NEXT?

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